Paradox
by ieatleaves
Summary: Sasuke and Naruto were night and day. But different or not, she was in love with both of them, and they loved her back. That was all she needed. Ongoing.
1. Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

She knew that their relationship confused everyone.

Hell, it used to confuse her, too. That's why she had stopped overthinking it – or just thinking it, in general.

As soon as she stopped thinking about it, it made perfect sense to her. She loved them – it was as simple as that.

Sakura was still half-asleep when she heard Sasuke moving about the room.

"You didn't tell me you had a mission," she said as she drowsily watched him put his weapons into the pockets on his black pants.

Sasuke always got up before her. It was as if he had some sort of an internal clock that screamed at him to get up before the sun rose every morning – it was an especially freaky concept for Sakura to grasp in the summer, when the sun rose at impossibly early hours in Konoha.

He was already fully dressed in his ANBU uniform, minus the mask. _What a pity_, Sakura thought. Sasuke had the ideal body for a shinobi – he was long and lean, but still muscled. She would've liked to have seen him change, as she enjoyed seeing him without his shirt on.

"Because I know you would've wanted me to rest last night if I had told you." Sasuke walked over to Sakura's side of the bed, and planted a kiss on her forehead. "Go back to sleep."

"How long will you be gone?" Sakura looked up into the onyx eyes that she loved so much. "You only got back from that other mission a few days ago, Sasuke…"

"This one won't be that long, I promise. It's supposed to be a pretty quick one." Sasuke gently pushed strands of pink hair out of Sakura's face. "I have to go now. I'll be back soon."

He leaned over to give Sakura a kiss. She let her lips linger over his, not wanting him to leave yet.

"Say bye to Naruto for me. The dobe better take care of you while I'm gone."

Sakura pouted. "Sasuke, I don't need to be taken care of. We're twenty two, for Kami's sake."

"I know that – I just don't like to leave you." Sasuke gave the pink-haired kunoichi the smile that he reserved only for her. "I love you. I'll see you when I get back."

"I love you, too."

With another swift kiss, Sasuke was gone, and Sakura sank back into his bed. She breathed in the sheets; Sasuke's scent lingered on them.

She fell back into deep sleep that was lulled by the familiar – and welcome – scent of the man she'd loved for a decade now.

It was nine o'clock. Sakura was getting off of her evening shift at the hospital. Just as she set her foot outside, a pair of familiar arms embraced her from the back.

"Hi, Sakura-chan." Naruto said, as she turned around to face him. He gave her a kiss on the cheek. "You look pretty."

Sakura laughed as she took his hand. "No, I don't. I probably look like hell right now – I've had such a long day."

"You do. You always look pretty to me."

Sakura squeezed his hand as she leaned into the side of his arms. "You always say that."

"And I always mean it." Naruto grinned down at her, as she only came up just under his shoulders. "You're the prettiest girl ever, Sakura-chan."

They hadn't discussed where their feet were taking them; they didn't need to. They had known each other for ten years by now, and Sakura knew that Ichiraku's was inevitable when it came to Naruto picking her up after work.

Once they were settled into their seats at the ramen vendor, Naruto ordered three bowls of beef ramen for himself and one miso ramen for Sakura.

"How was work, Sakura-chan?"

"It was long. A few ANBU came in for their physicals – which I swear they all avoid like the plague. I have no idea why my stethoscope scares them so much." Sakura rolled her eyes. "Which reminded me that Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei still need to come in for theirs."

"Oh, yeah, the teme left on a solo mission this morning, right?"

Sakura frowned. "I didn't know that it was a solo mission… How'd you know that?"

"He told me last night before he went to go pick you up that he won't be able to spar with me today because he'll be gone on the mission." Naruto draped his arm over Sakura's shoulders as he kissed the pink-haired girl's head. "He'll be fine; he didn't tell you it was a solo mission because he knew you'd worry, Sakura-chan. But you know Sasuke-teme – he's way too proud to let anything happen to him."

A couple of hours later, Sakura was tucked safely under Naruto's arm on his bed. She was cradled close to his chest, and she fell asleep to the even sound of his breathing.

She knew that when she woke up, Naruto would still be deeply asleep. Sakura smiled to herself as she thought about how different her two boys were – Sasuke and Naruto were night and day. But different or not, she was in love with both of them, and they loved her back.

That was all she needed.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

"Yo," came a voice from her window.

Sakura, who was wrapped in a towel from her shower, threw a rabbit figurine at her silver-haired sensei.

"_Sensei_," she snarled, "I'm in a freaking towel, you old man."

He had dodged the figurine with ease – the figurine could be heard in the background as it fell and shattered on the road outside – and regarded the kunoichi, whose pink hair was still dripping with water from her shower.

"Now, now, Sakura-chan. It's nothing I haven't seen before."

This time, Sakura threw a much larger duck figurine at him. _Who gives these figurines every year to her, anyway? _Kakashi thought wearily. He very much wanted to tell whoever it was that the figurines always ended up being chucked at him.

"You've only seen it before because you keep insisting on breaking into my apartment through the window. I do have a functioning door, you know." Sakura sighed. She tightened the knot that held the large towel up around her, and moved to her closet to find clothes to wear. "What brings you to my window at this hour, anyway?"

"Ah, our lovely Hokage wants you to come see her this morning." Kakashi got his ever-present orange book out of his back pocket, and started reading it as he spoke. "I came by here first because it's closest to the Hokage Tower, but I'm surprised to find you here. I thought you'd be at Naruto's."

"I was," said Sakura as she emerged from her closet, having picked out her hospital outfit from it. She laid the clothes and sat down on the edge of her bed, "but I had to wake up early for my shift, so I came here to pick up a few things. Naruto always sleeps in, anyway, so he wouldn't even know I'm gone until noon."

Kakashi looked over at her from his book. "Where's Sasuke?"

"Solo mission. Left yesterday morning."

"Aa."

Kakashi considered himself a veteran in life. After all, 36 for a shinobi who had lived through two shinobi wars was practically a dinosaur.

But even he, with all his wisdom and experience, had no idea what to make of his students'… "arrangement."

As he watched his genins grow to be chunins, then jonins, and, in Sasuke's case, ANBU, he had to admit that he was curious as to which of his two male pupils Sakura would end up with. Looking back on the day that Team 7 first met as a team, Kakashi remembered thinking that it would be a miracle if any of them got out of that team alive, let alone fall in love.

But fall in love they did.

By the time Sakura hit her twenties, she was undeniably one of the most respected and desired kunoichis in the village. She had never been – and probably never will be – traditionally beautiful like Ino or Tsunade were. Yet, when she grew out of the insecurities that plagued her in her early teenage years, Sakura –aptly enough – blossomed. Her naturally kind yet strong demeanor shone through in everything she did, and, coincidentally, her skills as both a medic and a ninja flourished under the Hokage's tutelage.

But long before Sakura's transformation into a butterfly was complete, Naruto and Sasuke had loved and fallen in love with her. It was Kakashi who first noticed – of course the dunces had no idea that what they felt for Sakura was love. Under the guise of friendship and team camaraderie, Naruto and Sasuke became more and more invested in Sakura and their relationship to her, and Kakashi watched with great pleasure as the idiots tried to figure out why they hated men coming near Sakura so much. Naruto seemed to tell himself that it was out of brotherly feelings of protectiveness over his best friend, while Sasuke tried to shake himself out of feeling anything by acting even colder to Sakura. The raven-haired boy's tactics to distance himself from emotions inevitably failed each time whenever a bewildered Sakura, oblivious to Sasuke's inner turmoil over his feelings – which, admittedly, wasn't her fault, as Sasuke himself struggled to know what they were – asked him what she had done.

Which, of course, was nothing, besides the fact that she simply had been her radiant self.

And as soon as Sasuke's eyes met her big, green ones, even his cold demeanor couldn't stand to be kept frozen, and things would go back to normal, with Sakura happily chirping away incessantly while Sasuke seemingly tolerated being next to her.

But Kakashi knew that Sasuke only fell in love more and more the happier Sakura appeared next to him.

Eventually, unable to figure out a different way to settle the matter, Naruto and Sasuke came to blows over who would ask Sakura out on a date first. The training grounds had never been so utterly demolished before, and Tsunade yelled so loudly at the two jonins, and for so long, that the patients in Naruto and Sasuke's hospital wing were rearranged to stay in different wings on the floor below.

"And _what,_ pray tell, was the reason for such a _moronically energetic_ 'sparring session'?" Asked Tsunade, finally, at the end of her very loud – and very expletive – speech.

The two boys remained silent.

_Bad move,_ Kakashi, who was also in the room, had thought, as he prepared for another loud string of curses from the Hokage.

And the curses would have continued for quite some time, if another voice hadn't interrupted.

"What the hell is going on here?" Came Sakura's voice.

She had been called away to Suna to help them train their medics a few days ago, and, by the looks of it, had come straight to the hospital upon entering Konoha.

"I heard from Ichigo at the gates that Naruto and Sasuke tried to – I don't know, destroy the village or something. I couldn't really make out what she was saying too well. Please, please, _please_ tell me that you guys weren't fighting over whether to go to Ichiraku for dinner or not. I will actually unaffiliated myself from Team 7 for the rest of my life if you guys were having that fight again." Sakura said drily.

The pink-haired kunoichi looked at the two of her closest friends with impatience at their ensuing silence. "Well?!"

Still Naruto and Sasuke didn't respond – they were, however, regarding Sakura as if they had seen water for the first time in the midst of a desert.

Tsunade, who saw the confused and impatient look on Sakura's face as well as the infatuation that was clearly written on Naruto's face and subtly, yet nonetheless visibly, written on Sasuke's face.

It all made sense now to her.

She turned to her apprentice. "Sakura," she began as she led her out of the room, much to Sakura's bewilderment, "I need a moment alone with your idiotic teammates. Go give your report of the mission to Suna to Shizune immediately."

Never the one to disobey her shishou and Hokage, Sakura let out a confused, "Um. Okay," before taking off for the Hokage Tower.

"So," Tsunade said as she re-entered Naruto and Sasuke's room, "this is what it's come to, huh?"

"What..?" Asked Naruto, perplexed.

"I must say, I didn't think you morons had good enough an explanation to cause such a ruckus to the town and harm to yourselves, but then again, that student of mine _is_ pretty damn special."

"We didn't – " Started Sasuke, before being cut off by Tsunade.

"Here's what you're going to do." She continued on as if Sasuke hadn't spoken. "You two are going to _grow some fucking balls_, and _tell_ Sakura how you feel about her. If you don't, I will make sure that she gets arranged a marriage to the handsomest, richest, and nicest lord in all of Fire Nation, because, quite frankly, that's who she deserves. But she should at least have the chance to reject both of you, which I hope to Kami that she will, because the two of you are complete _morons_." She turned away from the boys and started to make her way to the door, shouting her final words. "And s_tay away from my village's training grounds!_"

With this, Tsunade huffed out of the room, almost knocking over – and not caring that she almost knocked over – Kakashi on the way.

* * *

"_Kakashi Hatake._"

"Hn?"

Kakashi was broken out of his thoughts by Sakura's exasperated calling of his name.

"Are you going deaf or something? You're far too young for that." Sighed Sakura. "I _said_, 'Do you want to come in for something to eat or drink?' Or are you going to stay perched on that window so that I can kick you off of it so that I can change into clothes?"

Kakashi grinned. "As tempting as either of those options sound" – Sakura rolled her eyes – "I've got to get going. Got some things to take care of."

"Meaning you're going to hide out from shishou so that you don't have to go on real missions and can just read your creepy books all afternoon."

"You always were my smartest student, Sakura-chan." With a wave, Kakashi was gone in an instant.

In spite of herself, as Sakura turned her attention back to her clothes to get ready for the day, she found herself chuckling.

Her sensei was good like that.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Sorry I've been gone for so long! Getting back into writing now. I'll be updating this story soon as well as Outgrown, my other story, so please be on the look out. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed this, and please keep reviewing, everyone! It's how I gather the energy to keep writing :)


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